


Those Insubstantial Men

by follyofyouth



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Because Bethesda never did shit with the Kellogg + Nick stuff, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Drama, F/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Romance, Sorry to the Bostonians for Jenny's crankiness, Sorry to the Chicagoans for inaccurate depictions of Navy Pier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 03:04:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7490901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/follyofyouth/pseuds/follyofyouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick finds an unexpected ally in his quest to purge Kellogg from his memories once and for all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Insubstantial Men

**Author's Note:**

> Credit where it’s due! There is canon in here that has been heavily influenced by @demonicae, including some of her headcanons that I read and went YES GOOD, specifically ones that relate to offlining. Title is from "Gethsemane" by Dry the River.
> 
> There's some truly lovely art accompanying this piece from Christina. You can find her on Tumblr at silk-sutures.tumblr.com
> 
> Many apologies to Chicagoans for probably inaccurate depictions of Navy Pier. Many apologies to Bostonians for Jenny's complaints about the city.
> 
> TW: Non-graphic gun violence, character death, brief allusion to suicide, canon-typical violence, sad robots

She still doesn’t know how she came to be.

Oh, she understands the theoretical underpinnings. Sentient code is capable of generating adjustments and modifications as necessary. She’s an avatar of self-preservation, personality scraped from the memories of the man’s dead fiancée.

She is the result of trauma, of traumas – the plural being important. It turns out that the synthetic mind isn’t all that different from the human one; batter it and it will bolster its defenses. Her human counterpart’s murder, a few too many missing persons cases gone wrong, his torture at the hands of those who built him: it adds up.

 _Built, not made,_ she tries to reassure him when the fear flickers through his mind. _They’re responsible for your body, not your mind._

Which is funny because, really, who is she to talk?

The bits of 1s and 0s who refers to itself as Jenny, that’s who.

She’s been with him since sometime in the Institute days. She doesn’t remember when anymore, not a specific date, in any case; Nick isn’t consciously aware of her and the Institute’s purged his data banks one time too many for Jenny to be able to access that kind of information. It doesn’t really matter, at any rate; it’s a long time.

When they offlined him, confined him to darkness while they ripped him apart, she looked for comforting things. The memory transfer wasn’t without its gaps and losses, but there were enough kisses, enough jokes, enough quiet mornings in bed to weave together something that might offer solace.

Out in the world, she became the voice that kept him together until he found that first group, the first humans who offered him kindness, who saw him as something more than a discarded piece of machinery. She was the voice that kept him away from his seals and out of the water when he returned after a few weeks’ absence to find them all slaughtered.

She has taken on the mantle of his guardian, his grounding force. It’s a natural evolution; she doesn’t think her human counterpart would mind.

She is practiced, experienced. She can see the dangers.

But she is not omnipotent.

Nick has always been his own man, driven by his own motivations. The mishmash of memories from the human Nick’s life have always reassured her of this fact. There are late nights, nights without sleep, nights spent in a precinct office. There are dates interrupted, dates cut short, a move halfway across the country. There is shouting and arguments and one very memorable left hook that sent him down off the path to Commonwealth Institute of Technology. There is the body of a woman, dead on the street, and the thirst for vengeance that still burns. They all tell the same tale, one of a man hellbent on his goals, on justice. They are the beliefs that have carried him through the Wasteland and into Diamond City.

Of course she couldn’t prevent the Kellogg incident. She never had a shot and pretending otherwise is folly.

Or, that’s what she tells herself.

If he had been in low-power mode, or offlined, she could have taken a more physical form, She could have sat him down in a memory of a kitchen with green curtains and a green countertop. She could have _talked_ to him about it. He wouldn’t have remembered her when he came to, but it would have felt like she had at least made an effort.

She knows it would not have made an ounce of difference.

She knew something was wrong the instant they connected. It bypassed too many defenses, contained too much data. The code wasn’t inert; it reached and it grasped. It looked for footholds, for places to dig in. It was sentient. It had wisdom, memories, plans.

Kellogg was in his head as much as she was.

She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like that he’s there. It started off quietly, insidiously. Lay low. Keep under the radar. Surface in one big grand way, before retreating into interconnected bits of memory and coded.

She almost misses it when he begins to change things.

It’s a simple memory, almost inconsequential. They’re on the shore of Lake Michigan, a few summers before they left Chicago. His case load is light and her paper’s being investigated for accusations of pro-union activity; naturally, they’ve taken the day to sit in the sun.

She looks over, but it’s not Nick’s face –human or synthetic– that meets her gaze.

It’s at that moment that she realizes that something is very wrong.

***

Nick keeps going, keeps fighting. He and the vault dweller track Eddie Winter down, down to Andrew Station, down to a squalid little excuse for a makeshift vault. He’s a sad little man, his importance lost to the radiation and the frailty of human memory.

He has no remorse.

Nick guns the crime lord down, quick and clean, and for a moment, there is an emptiness so profound, so extreme that Jenny worries he’ll turn the gun on himself next.

Instead, he leads the two-man funeral procession up, up through the rubble, up through the ruined sandwich shop, onto the street.

Revenge has always been a hollow pursuit, no matter how justified. Eddie’s death won’t bring her human counterpart back, and won’t change Nick’s origin. All it does is put an end to an angry little man, and leave Nick’s gun down another few bullets.

It’s a quest she had tried to put a stop to, to no avail.

Nick stops, standing tall on the very ground where her human counterpart fell. The emptiness wells up again and, with it, Kellogg.

Jenny’s overwhelmed with images, images of a woman and a baby, and a house that’s falling apart somewhere out west. There’s blood and viscera and a well of anger like she’s never felt. They’re not from Nick’s life, not from his nightmares. This is a crime scene, yes, but it’s not from his case file.

 _It’s Kellogg’s_ , she realizes. _These are Kellogg’s memories._

And she’s livid. Absolutely livid. Seeing red. Hopping mad. All of the clichés and more because _how dare he_. This is supposed to be closure. This is supposed to be peace. This is supposed to be an end.

 _It’s supposed to be about them,_ she thinks. _Vengeance exacted. Justice done. Promise fulfilled._

And, for just a moment, she slips. It’s not about keeping Nick rooted; it’s about her rage.

Kellogg’s memories spring to life, vibrant and searing. There is a woman who is missing the top of her skull. Blood is splattered across the kitchen table where she’s crumpled. Jenny does not want to consider what is in the cradle, but the eerie absence of a baby’s cries hangs in the air.

She’s caught up in the rush, in the sick feeling in her stomach. _No._

This can’t happen. She needs him here, rooted in his own story, his own past, his own life.

She forces up memories, memories of her human counterpart in Nick’s arms, her blood staining his slacks; memories of her body growing cold as he wrapped her in his coat; memories of the bag she’d carried, news of the baby they hadn’t planned for, but would have loved all the same. She forces the memories of a double bed with a single occupant, of a wedding without a bride, of a husband without a wife or child.

Nick’s voice hitches in its monologue and the specters of Kellogg’s life dissipate. Jenny sighs and shuts her eyes as Nick’s voice breaks again. _This is only just the beginning._

***

She keeps it at bay, keeps _him_ at bay, through the entire ordeal with the Institute.

She doesn’t rest, doesn’t falter. It gets bad --- multiple simultaneous attacks the further they get into the belly of the boogeyman. Finally, she cuts off the access from his conscious programming to his memories. It’s a stopgap, a quick fix for a problem that’s only seeding itself further into his consciousness, and she knows it. She also knows, though, that none of it will matter if she lets Nick get himself blown to bits in a moment of forced offlining.

She has, from his memory banks, an image of their image of their human counterparts. She’s standing, learning against the door jam of a small, dark office, cramped with boxes. The chipped yellow clock on his desk reads 1:30. It smells of dusk and rain and she is exhausted. This case, this city that raised her but never welcomed her as its own, has been brutal. There is no end in sight.

He is on at the desk, papers everywhere. His sleeves are rolled, his tie undone, an army of coffee cups lining the windowsill like soldiers in formation. The photos on the wall are grisly: bloodied bodies, mangled bodies, bodies that no longer even look human. Eddie Winter is the boogeyman, the threat who lurks, the monster no one manages to catch. The clock is ticking. The evidence is mounting. He just needs to put the right pieces together the right way.

She stands and watches the cracks form. There’s passion and there’s obsession, and this is tipping too far towards the latter. They’ve both fallen prey to it: the late nights, the hyperfocus, the casual disregard for mental health. He’d had to talk her off a story once, remind her that journalists didn’t have the kinds of protections they used to, remind her that an accusation of sedition was a guarantee of trouble, remind her of the journalist they’d paraded around in handcuffs on his way out of the courthouse only six weeks before. All this, as she picked her hands, skipped meals, favored coffee to sleep.

They traded on and off on the role of anchor. They’d done it for years. It kept them sane, kept them whole.

For all her pedigree in keeping Nick on the right side of the devotion-disturbance divide, Jenny can’t help but think she should be better at handling this.

But the fact remains that Kellogg is no ordinary disturbance, and she is woefully unequipped to deal with him without help.

She wants to scream, wants to grab him by the shoulders and give him a good shake. She wants red flashing lights, a siren, a full-scale panic. Where there’s a fire, there should be smoke, but she can’t manage any of it.

So, she improvises. She starts floating thoughts of the Memory Den, thoughts of Amari and Irma, thoughts of memory loungers. She only picks the happy memories, the times when it brought a modicum of relief, when its seedy walls and cracking façade managed to stand as some kind of shelter. She hopes it’s enough for him to get the hint.

But it takes Hancock, strung out on god knows what, to make those images click.

“Nicky,” the ghoul drawls. “You need a break. You’ve got time. Why not go see Irma?”

Nick talks him in circles, dances around an answer. Tells Hancock he’s really not in any position to be giving advice, not with the ride he’s on.

But, Hancock, god love him, will not take no for an answer, will not leave the topic alone. He keeps pushing, keeps needling. If Jenny didn’t know better, she’d think he’d seen the cracks of Kellogg, too, could sense the fact that something was wrong.

Nick brushes him off every time.

In in the end, not long after the Institute’s been reduced to a smoking, radioactive crater in a sea of urban decay, he slips into the Memory Den on a rainy Thursday evening.

 _Any means to the end,_ Jenny tells herself. _Any means._  
***

It comes down to drawing him out, she reasons. Force him into the open and hope Amari can do the rest.

But memories are strange, especially when they’re twined with sentience. They make roots, twist themselves in with important processes, render themselves indestructible without significant collateral.

Jenny hopes Kellogg isn’t clever enough to figure that out.

***

The bar is smoky, even for this memory, and she tries to suppress a cough. Her human counterpart always carried a light, but never smoked herself. Even with Nick smoking like he does around the Commonwealth, she’s almost always able to ignore the sensory input of the tar and nicotine that hangs like a cloud around him.

But it’s pervasive here, ubiquitous, inescapable.

She’s wearing the dress, the red one. Her human counterpart made almost everything in her wardrobe, and this is no exception. It’s new this night, fresh off the machine, made from a pattern she’d salvaged from a dumpster with fabric that she’d bartered a psychology paper for in college.

She’s not sure whom it made a bigger impression on: her human counterpart, or Nick.

The other patrons look muted, muddled. They are the everymen, the rank and file of the border and the underworld. They are politicians, looking to garner votes, and union leaders, seeking to escape an official eye. They are crime bosses, negotiating deals, and bodyguards, firearms and lasers just barely out of sight. Chicago may have been every bit as dangerous as Boston, if not worse, but it always had an elegant prelude to its violence.

She can feel the warmth radiating from Nick as he sidles up alongside her, and it takes most of her self-control not to lean her head against his shoulder. She likes the physicality of these memories, the visceral contact they allow her. It’s too easy to forget that she has a role to play, a set sequence of events to follow, and she can’t afford another lapse, not now.

She fishes in her purse for a light, and something catches her eye. Her gaze wanders from Nick to another figure, drawn in sharp detail, moving his way through the crowd. He bends down, takes the light, and the conversation plays on, just the way it’s supposed to.

All the while, the figure draws closer. He’s dressed wrong --- all ratty jeans and chewed up chaps and leather jacket. Kellogg’s hardly inconspicuous in that get up and Jenny’s grateful for it. He’s a blemish on the suit and tie atmosphere the bar usually draws, and eventually, even Nick notices.

His hand is warm on her back as he leads her up the steps and out of the bar, and she lets herself lean into his touch for the briefest moment. On the street, they spare a moment for a passing comment about that joker in the leather clown suit; Jenny grins, lets him lead her down the road, but can’t help but throw the odd glance behind them.

They make it to the diner without incident, slide into some booth, and order coffees. Jenny takes it as a tentative win.

***

She’s standing in their kitchen, their tiny, tiny kitchen, in Chicago. It’s either very late or very early, depending on the perspective, and her fingers wrap around a mug of hot chocolate. Snow falls outside onto mostly silent streets, and she wishes the window had a better seal against the cold.

She didn’t pick this memory. She’s not sure how she got here, or why.

Sure, she remembers how it plays. It was the first time someone landed a blow on Nick on the job. It wasn’t anything big --- a bottle cracked over the hand --- but waking up to a call from St. Vincent’s wasn’t her human counterpart’s idea of fun.

But the human Nick had survived, so what was the harm?

There’s a knock on the door and she jumps. _That’s not right._

She crosses to the peephole and sees Nick standing there, arm in a sling. _That’s definitely not right._ She fidgets with the chain lock and the deadbolts before wrenching the door open with an unceremonious “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! What the hell happened?”

“Some clown with a box cutter, J,” he sighs. “Marlowe got’im down before he could do any real damage.”

“Some ---“ _Oh no._

“Yeah,” Nick groans, sitting down. “Least I know my tetanus shot’s up to date now.” He pauses, noting the coffee cup on the small table near the door. “You drinking coffee now?”

“Hot chocolate. Why, you jonesin’ for a coffee fix?”

“They made it pretty clear what I’m jonesin’ for isn’t the kind of thing you take with pain killers.”

“Pain killers and whisky chasers usually aren’t a good combination, no,” she says, picking up her mug. “They booking the guy?”

“Attempted robbery and assault.”

“What a charmer,” she drawls.

“Clown was wearing leather chaps,” Nick grumbles. “What does he think this is, the wild west?”

Her grip tightens on the cup. “Everybody’s got to make a statement,” she offers, lightly. “Not enough to just blend in with the scenery.”

“Jenny,” he starts, noticing the way her knuckles are starting to blanch. “They got’im. I’m fine. He’s gonna spend a nice three to five years behind bars.“

She wants to tell him that it isn’t that simple; that this never happened, not like this, and the fact that it has scares her; that the clown in the chaps is more of a threat than he realizes; that no bars will hold him. She wants to grab him and run, go hide in some far off place with sturdy locks.

But, the fact of the matter is that she’s not sure anything she throws at Kellogg will be enough to stop him. She hopes that Kellogg is getting sloppy, that Amari is watching. She hopes that someone has a plan, and that she can buy them enough time to execute it.

Nick presses a kiss to her cheek as he heads for the shower.

She settles for checking the locks they already have three times.

***

She’s sitting at their booth at the restaurant, the night Nick is due to propose. She can smell the oregano and garlic pouring from the kitchen, and the chatter of the other diners. Nick’s just excused himself to get something; she knows it’s the ring. Her eyes scan the room, looking for a glimpse of anyone, anything out of the ordinary.

It slides into the seat across from her.

“You’re not playing a bad game,” Kellogg offers. “I’ll give you that.”

“You won’t win this,” Jenny counters. “I know you’re here. Amari knows you’re here. You can’t have him.”

“I don’t want him,” he says. “Ole Nicky’s no good to me. But this body, on the other hand…”

“You can’t have it, either. I won’t let that happen.” Her eyes dart around. She’s almost certain he is armed, and Nick’s nowhere in sight. Her options aren’t exactly multitudes.

“You’re just a computer program who thinks she’s human. It’s very cute; it’s very sweet. But, sweetheart,” Kellogg leans in. “You don’t have a chance.”

She doesn’t know what comes over her, whatever gives her the idea to grab the steak knife and jam it through his gun hand, into the table. It’s not her style, not her way. Her human counterpart was never the combatant.

But as she bolts up from the table, half knocking it onto her would-be assailant, Jenny admits to herself that she is not her human counterpart, that the role of combatant might be a role she’s suited for after all. She darts toward the back, towards Nick and the kitchen, knocking other patrons out of her way while Kellogg spews curses behind her.

She barrels into Nick as the first shot rings out, grabbing his hand.

His _metal_ hand.

Jenny looks up and it’s not Nick’s face looking at her --- not his human one, at any rate. Instead, its laugh lines and scars and chewed up synthetic skin and yellow eyes gaze back at her, startled.

“Run!” She yells. “I’ll explain later, but we have to go now!”

There’s a crashing sound behind them as Kellogg’s chair falls to the ground. Nick is still staring at her, aghast.

 _Jesus, Mary, and Joseph_ , she thinks, yanking Nick along behind her as she darts behind the bar and into the kitchen. She scampers back, through the cooks and dishwashers, toward the door and into the alley.

“We need a car,” she tells him. “Can you pick locks?”

“You’re … you’re dead.”

“Nick, that’s really, _really_ immaterial right now. Can you pick locks?”

“I _watched_ you die.”

“And if you don’t want to watch me do it again, we have to get out of here. Can you pick a car lock?”

“Yes, but---“

She drags him towards the street, towards the nearest car. “You pick; I’ll hotwire”

“I don’t---“

“If you don’t pick the lock, we’re gonna die horrible, bloody deaths. Kellogg’s gonna come out here, shoot us both, and then take over your body. You really want him going near Ellie? Hell, you want him going near anyone?”

That snaps Nick back enough to get to work on the car door. She pops the hood, staring at the wires with a strange sort of fondness. Her human counterpart was the daughter of a mechanic; she’d always learned the lessons she wasn’t supposed to the best. Jenny’s grateful that particular talent made such an impression on the human Nick. She’s able to start it easily enough and Nick makes quick work of the locks.

Then, they’re in, driving roundabout routes to the apartment their human counterparts made into their home, Jenny’s eyes always behind them, always waiting for Kellogg.

“You mentioned something about explaining all of this?” Nick asks. “Could really use your weigh-in on that.”

“When you hacked into Kellogg’s implant, a copy of his consciousness was transferred into your memory and is trying to kill you and take over your body.” She turns to look at him. “So, don’t get shot.”

“I got all of that. I meant you.”

“You know damn well who I am.”

“You’re dead.”

“If you’re going strictly by our human counterparts, then so are you.”

“You some Institute trick?”

Jenny glares at him. It’s an accusation that stings more than she’ll ever admit to. “I’m not any kind of trick. I’m what happens when drugs and torture and psychological trauma all pile up into some kind of train wreck and _someone_ has to put out the fire.”

The last bit of that comment might have been a bit out of line, but she finds it hard to feel any real remorse for it.

“What?”

She huffs. “One of _your_ programs created me. I’m the one who keeps you from throwing yourself into the nearest body of stagnant, irradiated water when things go sideways. Self-preservation, embodied.” She turns her attention back towards watching for Kellogg. “And since you can’t be trusted with that, one of your programs created me.”

 _Alright, that was_ definitely _out of line,_ she thinks. _Honest, but probably not helpful. Or kind._

Next to her, Nick is silent.

“Usually, you don’t know I’m here. You’re not supposed to be consciously aware of me. If I do my job well, I’m just instinct. But I let you let Kellogg in, and now I need your help to get him out. For both our sakes.”

“How long have you been in my head?”

“Remember the time the scientists wanted to test stress levels on processing speed? And they had you keep reliving the whole ‘Human Jenny getting shot’ moment over and over again while asking you, repeatedly, to affirm that you were a tool, not a human, and that tools did not need agency? And when you couldn’t answer fast enough, they tore you apart to see what they could do to increase the processing efficiency?”

Nick grits his teeth. “Yes.”

“That’s when,” she says. “Turn left.”

“Why are you showing up now?”

“I’m always around. Like I said, you’re not supposed to be aware of me. But, if I had to guess, it’s because you’re consciously here, in this memory, trying to root Kellogg out. Your consciousness and I crossed paths and that’s why I’m registering.”

“How do I know I can even trust you?”

“How many times were you purged by the Institute?”

Nick scowls at her. “I didn’t exactly keep track.”

“But you know it’s a lot. Don’t you wonder how a program that they didn’t create survived?”

She waits a beat. He doesn’t answer.

“I’m more memory than anything else, “ she finally says. “More your memory than anything else. There’s a reason I survived. Besides,” she pauses. “Who do you think kept Kellogg in check this long?”

Nick casts a sidelong glance at her. “You’re really Jenny Lands?”

“As much as you’re Nick Valentine.”

“Answer me one thing.”

She nods.

“Do you have a plan?”

***

She hadn’t planned for this, had never thought of what she’d do in the event that she crossed paths with this Nick, fully conscious and aware of her presence. He’s not like the Nick who lives preserved in memory, playing and replaying the same scenes over and over again.

This Nick is alive, vibrant, chain smoking cigarettes out the window of their kitchen. He seems to hum with energy, with nerves. He doesn’t trust her and, really, she can’t blame him. With Kellogg already running amok, it can’t be a comfort to know there’s yet another sentient AI in his head. If their places were reversed, she’s not sure she’d be anymore amenable to the situation.

Still, she needs him to trust her, or at least stop giving her looks like he’s waiting for a knife in the back.

“Come on,” she finally says. “Sitting around here won’t do us any good.”

***  
Roxy’s is all checkered tile floors and red formica table tops. It’s hot, even with the air conditioner, and Jenny’s legs stick to the vinyl booth. They’d had their first date here, though they wouldn’t label it as such until well after the fact. Nick is across from her, hat and coat still on. He’s eased up a bit on the cigarettes, and even on the dirty looks. She assumes it’s thanks to the continued absence of Kellogg. Getting him to listen to her, however, remains a challenge.

“So, let me get this straight,” Nick starts, still skeptical. “One of my programs created you from Nick’s memories of Jenny.”

She nods, trying to put him at ease. “As a response to, well, a lot of things.”

Nick ignores her, set on keeping his guard up. “And you’ve been active since the Institute days.”

She nods again. “That’s the short version.”

Overhead, the lights flicker.

“And Kellogg’s---“

“Trying to go through and change memories that are important to who you are. The ones that keep you grounded in being you.”

“Which is why, after I killed Winter…”

“Yeah,” Jenny offers, quietly. “That’s why it wasn’t me, or, I guess, human me that you saw.”

Nick’s quiet for a moment. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

That’s it. It’s something. It’s more than something --- it’s a beginning, a crack in the façade of suspicion. It’s the first glimmer of hope she’s had, the first sense she’s gotten that yes, she might be able to win his trust after all. “Does it bother me that there’s a psychopath trying to push you out of your own body? Yes, it does.”

“No, not that. The fact that we’re not who we think we are.”

“You mean that you have the memories of a dead man and I’m a recreation of his equally dead fiancée?”

He lets out a short, mirthless laugh. “Something along those lines.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not something I think about. I exist because you exist. I have a job and I do it. Day in, day out. That’s just how it works --- I guess that’s enough. I don’t think … I don’t think other Jenny would mind, you know?” She shrugs. “Granted, I get to keep my bubble. I don’t deal with people like you do. ”

“You just clean up the aftermath.” There’s the faintest grin in his voice and she feels the tension she hadn’t realized she was carrying begin to slip from her shoulders.

“I didn’t say it!” She answers as the waitress brings an order of fries to the table.

“Didn’t have to,” he offers, dipping a fry into ketchup. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”

“Okay,” she sighs. “Maybe I do a little damage control. I don’t mind it! Well,” she pauses. “Except for that Skinny Malone debacle.”

“Skinny Malone?”

“Yes, Skinny Malone.” She brandishes a fry, knowing it’s really not the time to start airing grievances, but hoping a little good-humored elbowing might melt the ice faster. “You know that voice that told you not to go alone? That going alone was a bad idea? That you’d never let a partner go at it alone? That was me.”

“It was fine in the end. We got out, and I got a new partner out of the whole thing.”

“Assuming you mean our vault dwelling friend, we’d still be sitting there without her.” She sips plaintively at a Nuka Cola. “Or, with our luck, sitting in pieces.”

Nick offers her an almost-grin. She wants to cheer. She knows she’s starting to break through, that she just might win him over, that they have a chance. “So, Skinny Malone, huh? I’ll make it up to you, buy you dinner.”

“Gee, thanks,” she intones. “Real generous, Nick.”

“How did we end up here, anyway?” He asks, looking around. “I haven’t thought about this place in years.”

“Figured we needed to lie low for a while. This isn’t important enough to flag Kellogg, but I can still keep an eye out for any anomalies.”

“It was our first date. You’re sure it won’t tip’im off?”

She shakes her head. “We didn’t realize it was our first date ‘til well after the fact. Think we spent most of it shootin’ the breeze about work and Calloway and why the best bands are always at the worst gin joints.”

“Calloway…” Nick lets out a low whistle. “There’s a blast from the past.”

“Tell me about it. With everything these days … well. Some Councilman skimming cash doesn’t really amount to a hill of beans.”

“All the good adds up, Jenny.”

“Ellie’s rubbing off on you.”

“What can I say? Gotta have some good influences.”

“Can’t be booze and cigarettes all the time.”

“Have you _tasted_ what the Bobrov boys pass off as vodka?”

“Thankfully,” Jenny groans. “I’m spared that, though the nice little program who makes taste work certainly isn’t.”

“Wait, you’re telling me the other programs are sentient, too?”

“Oh, no. No, just me.”

Nick relaxes. “ I was gonna say, I’ve got an awful lot of apologies to be making if that’s the case.”

Jenny laughs.

And there it is: an actual, bonafide Nick Valentine smile.

 _Well,_ she tells herself. _You’re definitely not alone anymore._

***

“I miss pizza.”

They’re sitting on the floor of the apartment in Chicago, dark save for a few paltry candles scattered about. It’s summer, swelteringly hot, and they’d lost power in the last round of rolling blackouts. They’d mutually decided that heating the oven, even manually, was an unacceptable option and, as such, had made the trek down the block, wilting under the lights and humidity, in search of an open restaurant. Pizza had been their reward. It’s a moment from the early days, back before the indictment had come down, and before they’d decided to do something about their extended, unintended courtship.

“Would you really want Wasteland pizza, Lands?” Nick asks, wiping his good hand against a napkin.

They’ve silently agreed to ignore the fact that she’s a program, incapable of existing out in the world in her present form, for the sake of conversation. It’s a nice gesture, one that she genuinely appreciates. It’s not that she’s self-conscious, per se, about the sentient AI bit, but her lack of direct experience out in the physical world would certainly put a hitch in things.

Jenny pauses, slice halfway to her mouth. “What would you put on it? I mean, where would you get the cheese?”

“Brahmin milk.”

“Nick, I said cheese. Not irradiated cheese substitute.”

“Says the woman who made her grilled cheese with American.”

“Ohhh, don’t start me, Valentine,” she grins. “You put lettuce on yours. Ruined a perfectly good sandwich every time.”

He waves a hand, brushing off her protests as he reaches for another slice. “You’d still have sauce.”

“Sort of. But, so far, we only have crust and sauce. And that’s assuming there’s still yeast, and that two hundred year old oregano still works as a seasoning.”

“And cheese,” he adds. “Besides, they’d get creative. Brahmin bacon, Mirelurk meat, mutfruit,” he pauses. “Radroach chunks.”

“Oh _god_ , Nick! I’m _eating_ here!”

He chuckles, low and warm. “Sorry, J.”

“Radroach chunks. Why would you do that to pizza? What did the pizza do to you?”

“Most folks out there haven’t had pizza.”

She eyes him. “The ghouls know! Besides, somewhere, some old Italian grandma’s recipe book survives. I’m sure of it. _That book_ knows what real pizza is supposed to consist of. And,” she pauses, taking a bite. “It knows radroach chunks are _not_ part of the recipe.”

Nick just chuckles, shaking his head.

He’s come to trust her, as far as she can tell. He’s not as guarded, not as defensive. He’s stopped eyeing her with that mixture of confusion laced with just a hint of suspicion. She suspects it’s in no small part thanks to Kellogg’s continued absence. The memories she’s led them into are so small, so inconsequential in the big scope, that her gambit keeps paying off; they’ve yet to be discovered.

Jenny’s not sure how long it will last, though. She’d like to think she’s outsmarted the merc, at least for the moment, but her human counterpart and Nick’s read enough Greek tragedies to ward off any sort of confidence in her strategy. Getting comfortable isn’t an option.

But god, moments like this, she’d like to.

It’s entirely novel to have someone to really _talk_ to. Yes, she has the memories, but its essential to allow them to play out as they happened to avoid accidentally corrupting them. And, yes, she’s been there for Nick when he’s been offlined, but trying to reassure him, again, mainly involves memories. She’s spent practically her entire existence in isolation, without anyone else to talk to. To have it change so suddenly, so dramatically, is almost magical.

True, she would have preferred it without the Kellogg issue, but nothing’s perfect.

***

Children dart by with bright balloons and soft cotton candy. The sun is beating down and Lake Michigan rolls in the background. Navy Pier is a cacophony of gleeful noise and mechanics, the tinny music of the Italian swings carrying into the air around them.

Under her hat, Jenny’s hair is plastered to her neck, and she has a sinking feeling that her dress truly is beginning to stick to her back in the July humidity. Next to her, Nick has foregone his jacket in favor of rolled shirt sleeves, though his tie remains resolutely around his neck.

“There’s no way you’re comfortable in that,” she intones.

Nick scans the crowd. “Beats adding the trenchcoat in on top of it.”

“You could take the tie _off_ , you know.”

“Wouldn’t be dressed, then.”

She fights the urge to point out that she is clad in neither hosiery nor gloves and that, by his logic, she isn’t dressed either and that the world has not ended as a result of it. The air hangs like soup around them and Jenny wishes for a downpour. She knows the odds of it helping fall into the category of slim to none, but can’t help wishing for even temporary relief.

This is a mix of pleasure and business. She and Nick had already planned to be at the festivities for the fourth, but hadn’t planned for him to be on undercover detail. The reports of the Pint Sized Slasher had started up again, and then a body was found with the all the right markings. Those gathered on the pier had money; their safety was paramount.

It had been a fairly uneventful evening for their human counterparts, one seared into their memories for the heat rather than any grand event. Jenny can feel the quarter sized blister that had formed on her human counterpart’s heel when her feet swelled beginning to form, and she’s sure that Nick can feel that heat rash that blossomed across the human Nick’s back.

She’s entirely too enthralled to complain, however.

Most of the memories she tends to, the ones that drive Nick, aren’t of these great, grand crowds. They aren’t of the Chicago skyline or the view of Lake Michigan. It is not the bombast of fireworks that snap him from low power cycles or the breeze off the water.

She doesn’t mind the memories of cramped offices, of cramped apartments, of cramped cars. They are safe, homey in their own way, but they are most certainly not the splendor of the city that had meant so much. They are not the wonder of the world that was, that never will be again. They don’t thrum with neon and noise and people in the same way that this memory does, even if reliving it has her wondering if she’s going to melt into the pier.

“Does it ever just ache?” She asks.

“Does what ever just ache?”

“The absence. All of this, just,” she gestures. “Gone.”

Nick pauses. “It was never our life. Not ours. Like it or not, the rubble is home.”

“I know, but … it doesn’t feel like it. “

A small girl zips past, pigtails flying out behind her with a Jangles the Moon Monkey in her arms.

“I know what you mean,” Nick says, voice low. “Would you ever go back?” He asks.

“To Chicago? Now?” She shakes her head, ignoring the abject impossibility. “I only see the world these days second hand, but it’s enough to tell me it’d be too sad. The precinct, the paper, that hole in the wall where we met, our _apartment_.” She swallows hard, and she can almost feel the tears in her voice. “Dust, if we’re lucky. Ruins, if we’re not.”

Nick quirks an eyebrow at her. “Not big on the ruined city shtick?”

She shrugs, looking away. “Can’t have supermutants in my kitchen if my kitchen isn’t there to stand in.”

“Can’t lose a home if it’s not there to lose.”

She nods.

Her grief, for Chicago and everything it represents, makes no sense. Her home --- the human Jenny’s home --- was never hers to lose. It is like her grief for the precinct and the paper, the Wrigley Building and the pier, for their future and what it might have held. They are things that were never hers, but feel intimately as if they were.

But Nick, _this_ Nick, is a different story. Her fear for him is entirely her own. This is not the Nick of memory, not the Nick of byegone days. This is the Nick who is her contemporary, her ally, her partner --- in survival, if nothing else. This Nick is hers and hers alone to lose, though she has no intention of allowing that to happen.

“It’s different for Boston, though, isn’t it?” He venutres.

She nods again. “Chicago had possibilities. I’d made my peace with Boston by the time I met you. It doesn’t hurt as much. Besides,” she says, reaching behind the pull the fabric of the dress away from her back. “I’d already seen the worst parts of Boston. Can’t say the same of the windy city.”

“You were in the gutter a fair bit, Lands.”

“Spent a lot of that time with you.”

The fingers of his good hand wrap around hers, and she settles her hand in his. “We had some good times there, J.”

“Some of the best.”

***

The bar is still seedy, still smoky, still an underbelly.

It is, however, far less crowded than that earlier memory.

It’s their last night in Chicago, the night of the worst snowstorm to hit the city in twenty years. The walk across town is something out of a fairytale, no cars, no sirens, just silent snowflakes.

Jenny keeps her eyes on the skyline during the walk, letting Nick lead. She should be vigilant; she should be watching for Kellogg. But, her human counterpart loved Chicago, loved its skyline, soaked in every second she had with it. Chicago had been kind to her, gotten her off her feet, let her cut her teeth as a reporter, set her on the path to meet Nick. Here, the human Jenny never had to worry about made men, or dark cars in narrow alleyways.

Sure, there were the bombs that would eventually do them all in, but those were ubiquitous.

She’s loathe to admit it, not the least because it’s grossly inappropriate, but she likes having Nick, her Nick, around. She likes the way she can straighten his tie, or brush something off his coat; likes that she can talk to him, watch the way his eyes dance; likes that, this time, he’ll remember her. Mostly, though, Jenny likes having someone else, someone sentient, in these places with her.

It makes them feel less lonely.

She is, for all intents and purposes, a ghost. She haunts his circuits and his pathways, lingers in his mind the way the human Jenny’s spirit must have lingered in the house they shared. She has a job, yes, and a purpose. Yes, she may just be some program born of need and necessity, but what’s a ghost but a story born of loss and love?

There’s no house band tonight, not with the risk to life, limb, and instrument that comes with traveling in the snow. Instead, it’s the bouncer and the barkeep, a handful of patrons, and the old jukebox in the corner. Someone feeds the fickle thing a few quarters, then, frowning, smacks its side. It groans to life, Glenn Miller and his trombone, long lost over the Channel.

They both know how this memory goes. Nick offers her a hand, pulls her to her feet, and into him. Jenny settles against his chest, leaning her head against the fabric of his shirt, breathing him in. There’s not much room to dance, but they make do, small steps and a delicate lead. Nick presses his cheek against the top of her head and she closes her eyes, leaning into him and enjoying the moment.

There’s a question bubbling up, an answer she needs, but doesn’t want. She wants to tamp it down, hold it back, bury it where it belongs.

But the question falls from her lips before she even realizes she’s asked it.

“Knowing how it all ended, you regret it?” She asks. It’s a strange question, even by her standards. Uncommonly nervous. She’s not usually one for doubt, but it’s clawing its way out after all.

“What, you?” Nick lets out a soft chuckle. “Lands, you could walk through my door tomorrow and I’d carry you to the chapel all the same.”

She presses her cheek to the underside of his chin, content with the answer, and tries to enjoy the moment. She has Nick. He has her. Here, there is no Kellogg --- for the moment, in any case. Here, there is no Institute. They are safe.

But Glenn Miller’s Berkeley Square is lost to the ashes, and pretending it’s not is as futile as any other wish. She doesn’t exist outside of this world, and never will. This moment is ephemeral, and she knows it. Kellogg is out there, and they still have to put an end to him, though god knows how. Nick will have to leave sometime, and she’ll be alone again, the ghost in the machine.

She presses her face into Nick’s shirt again, and tries to stop thinking so much.

***

It’s late, and they’re sore. Unpacking Nick’s boxes had taken more time, more effort than she’d expected. But here it is, all of it, all set up.

This is their first Monday night in Boston, the first night in the new precinct. It’s newer, more high-tech, than Chicago. It is colder, more procedural. The community refrigerator is free of photos. The mugs in the drain board are all white, utterly non-descript. There are no Nuka Cola pin-up girls, a sight she never thought she’d miss. There is no camaraderie, even among the officers who have been there for some time, and no casual jokes.

She remembers the dread this place filled her human counterpart with, how she’d tried to chalk it up to nerves, and adjustment, and being back in a city that she’d escaped from as soon as she could. It had been so different from Chicago, from home. There, she’d been quickly accepted by Nick’s coworkers, even before they’d announced to the world that they were dating. They had embraced her, making sure she was invited to holiday parties and summer barbecues. It felt like a family.

She’d tried to tell herself that Boston was different, that she wasn’t some little girl in the bad side of town anymore, that she was the fiancée of a detective --- a detective who’d been specifically recruited for the case. She didn’t need to be protected. She didn’t need to be welcomed in. She was established. Nick was established. They wouldn’t be standing on lines hoping for food, dumpster diving on the nice end of town for winter coats. They’d get married and live comfortably. It would be different from her childhood. It would be different and far, far better.

Her human counterpart hadn’t bought a word of it, and she’d been proven right. There’s a reason Jenny doesn’t like these memories. Being back in the midst of them makes her want to run.

She kicks the door to Nick’s office shut behind her, arms filled with two Gwinnett Ales, napkins, some paper plates, and a pizza. She sets it all down on the nearest cabinet, before shrugging off her coat, and hanging it on the nearby rack. Nick teases her from behind a box of files on his desk, some comment about _Did they run out of bags?_

A shot rings out from the front of the building.

Instinctively, she drops to the ground behind the door, before gingerly reaching up to flip the lock into place. _This never happened. This isn’t supposed to happen_ , she tells herself. _The only way this should even be possible is ---_

“Kellogg,” Nick grimaces.

“How did he find us?” Jenny whispers. “This isn’t ---“

“It’s different with you here,” Nick offers. We gotta get out, doll.”

Jenny can hear the foot falls of heavy boots, and then, another shot.

He motions for her to join him behind the desk, and she does, making sure to stay low and out of view of the windowed panel on the door. Nick gropes blindly for the pull chain on the lamp, reaching around the files, fumbling til he finds it. She fights the urge to tell him to hurry up, that it’s not too far from the desk out front to the office they’ve just barely set up.

There’s the sound of a door being tried, and then shot open. “Come on out Valentine!” He offers. “I’ll make it quick for you both --- no point in suffering.”

“Come on,” Nick starts, taking her hand. “We’re not gonna hang around for this.”

“What’re we gonna do? Can’t go out the door.”

“We’re not.”

Jenny’s eyes widen, and Nick nods. “Oh, you’ve gotta be joking. The window?” Jenny hisses, eyes wide. “Nick, we’re nine feet up!”

“Take your shoes off. It’ll soften the landing.”

“Nine feet!”

“It’s not gonna be a full nine feet, Lands. You’ll be fine.”

“I’m gonna break an ankle!”

“You wanna break your ankle or get shot?”

Out in the hallway, glass shatters. “Look at the mess you’re makin’ me make, Nick. Just make this easy.”

“J,” Nick starts, voice softer. “You’re not gonna break your ankle. Ditch the heels, and keep your knees bent. We’re gonna get out of this --- trust me.”

She meets his gaze for a moment, swallows hard, and nods. She wants to hold him there a moment longer, to rest her hand on his cheek, and feel it under skin. She’s struck by both the permanence and the temporality of the situation, of their whole relationship.

As she watches him hoist himself onto the ledge and then out, she finds herself thinking back to the night in the bar, the last night in Chicago, the futility of the phrase ‘I wish’ when you’re a sentient computer program.

She ducks out onto the ledge, feeling the chill around her legs. She has memories, she tells herself, a lifetime of memories. She can always go back, play the part, play the human Jenny to the human Nick. It’s nice. It’s safe. There will be no Kellogg. She’ll repair any damage that’s done. Everything will be like it was. She’ll have it all back.

She slides off the ledge, grimacing as she hits the ground.

It’s not enough.

***  
Jenny doesn’t believe in fairy tales, not in the cleaned up, sanitized, happy ending, family friendly ones in any case. The old world ones, however, are a different matter entirely.

If she was ever anything, it certainly wasn’t the princess, but she assumes the archetype will have to do. Her grandmother was the wise woman, the seer, the soothsayer who told her not to come back to Boston after graduating. Yes, her grandmother had promised her a city of dead ends, and missed changes if she returned, told her to follow where fate had led her instead.

This is no city to survive in, she’d said.

So, she had gone off gamely to a life in Chicago. She’d met the knight, though Nick – human or synth – would roll his eyes at the comparison. They’d defeated evil, even if only on the micro scale. They’d fallen in love. They’d built a life.

And then the brave knight’s quest led him to Boston, the city she’d been told never to return to, the city that only promised ruin.

At the time, she’d worried it would be Nick’s. Maybe, in a way, it was.

But fairy tales, real fairly tales, have never been especially kind to their women, never been the kind of stories that forgave blatant disregards of a warning. _Of course it wouldn’t be Nick’s ruin --- it wasn’t his warning to ignore._

In some way, her human counterpart’s death was the fairytale ending everyone kept telling her was just around the corner, though certainly not in the way they’d meant. They’d had visions of wedding bells and babies, some house in the suburbs with a tire swing and a little white fence, but they’d forgotten that no fairy tale ends without blood.

She can’t help but see this as some sort of coda, some bizarre epilogue, or maybe a sequel. The landscape’s changed, and the knight is battered and bruised; the princess has lost her crown and the castle’s in ruins.

She’s not sure it matters. The players are still there. There is still a battle to be fought, a fate to be avoided.

This time, there will be no fairy tale ending. She intends to make sure of it.

***  
Nick is pacing, covering the length of their small kitchen in three strides before turning back again. He’s been at it since they’d driven from the precinct, as if determination might ward the murderer off their door. After half an hour, she’d brewed coffee, handing it off to him for want of something better to offer.

They’re in Boston. It’s January. In seven months, her human counterpart would be dead on the street. She’s not sure they have the luxury of that much time.

“Will you sit down?” She asks. “I think I have a plan.”

Nick obliges her, pulling up a chair across the table.

Even she can’t believe what’s about to come out of her mouth.

“So, if we can lure him out, and you can get a clean shot, we end Kellogg. If we end Kellogg, we solve the problem.”

Nick is looking at her like she’s lost her mind. Maybe she has.

“Let me get this right: you want me to put you in front of a gun. Again.”

“You’ve never put me in front of a gun.”

Nick eyes her over his coffee cup. The implication is clear.

“That wasn’t your doing,” she offers in response. “That was the BADFTL and you know it. You’ve seen the terminal.”

“I could have turned down the job.”

“And the extra sixty grand a year? Nick, don’t be silly. I could have asked you not to take the position; I grew up in Boston, remember? I knew what kind of place it could be. As I recall, I didn’t raise any concerns.”

“I don’t like it. It’s too risky. There has to be some other way to draw him out.”

“I’m not wild about it either. But,” she sighs. “It’s our best chance.”

“And what if he shoots you? He’s got a body count that’d rival Eddie and his boys.”

“I don’t know,” she admits, softly. “Probably nothing good. But,” she pauses. “That won’t happen.”

Across the table, Nick’s head is in his hands, and he won’t look her in the eye. “I sure hope you’re right, J.”

 _Me too_ , she thinks, reaching across to squeeze his arm. _For both of us._

***

She’s sitting at a café across the street from the Grey Tortoise billboard, from Joe’s Spuckies, from where the human Jenny Lands, eight weeks pregnant, was allowed to be gunned down in the summer sunlight in revenge for her fiancé’s investigation into Boston’s most notorious crime lord.

She thinks she’s going to be sick.

 _This is absurd,_ Jenny tells herself as she pulls on her gloves and gathers her purse, preparing to step out into the street. You’re a computer program. _A sentient computer program crafted from a dead man’s memories of his dead fiancée. You’re a very impressive piece of code, not a person. You can’t murder computer code._

Except, where Nick has always struggled with being Nick, Jenny’s never been one for an existential crisis. As it stands, she may as well _be_ the real Jenny, for all that’s left of her.

And she doesn’t want to die.

She likes her existence, strange as it is. She thinks her human counterpart would understand. She likes her job, likes the little comfort she can bring Nick.

No, she doesn’t want to die. But, even more than that, she doesn’t want to lose Nick. She refuses to lose Nick.

 _It’ll be fine,_ she tells herself. _He won’t let anything happen to you._

She closes her eyes, and steps out into the street.

_Come on, Valentine, end him. End this. Don’t let history repeat itself._

A shot rings out.

She feels her shoulders shoot up, hears her purse drop to the ground.

Then another.

Her hearts thuds against her chest.

And another.

She looks down, waiting for the red to seep through her shirt, the way Nick’s memory says it always does. Everyone knows how this story is supposed to play.

She waits to fall to the ground, sputtering out last breaths between the rivers of blood she expects to pour from her mouth.

She waits for the pain, the dim awareness that she never expected the end to look like this.

The wrinkled white shirt seems entirely unimpressed by her expectations and remains resolutely unstained.

“Jenny!” A voice calls out.

 _Nick’s_ voice.

Slowly, she turns around.

Kellogg is at her feet, his skull blown open. Nick must be ten feet behind her, gun drawn.

It dawns on her that she’s shaking. Nick closes the distance between them, wrapping her in his arms. She buries her face into the cloth of his coat before realizing that he’s shaking too.

There are sirens in the distance, and the world around them begins to soften and blur. It’s more dream than memory now, a wish and hope, a better ending than the truth.

She breathes him in, coolant and metal and freshly washed cotton, and sighs. They’ve done it. They’re safe. She blinks back tears and presses herself closer into him as he rubs slow circles on her back.

And then, _damnit,_ there go the tears and the sniffles after all. There they are, whole and well, and she’s crying into Nick’s chest. Some perverse mixture of anxiety and grief and relief and it’s all pouring out, soaking his shirt. She can’t explain it, can’t even try to explain it, but Nick still understands.

_We’re alive._

***  
They’re standing outside of her apartment building, the night they met. Nick’s suit is pressed, and she’s wrapped in the red dress, and his card is stored safely in her clutch. The birdcage veil over her eyes would look demure, if she was capable of such a thing.

She’s known this was moment was coming. Assuming she did her job correctly, it was the only was for the whole affair to end. She’s supposed to keep him safe, keep him grounded, keep him out in the world that so desperately needs him. He’s not supposed to be here with her, and they both know it.

But, however true that knowledge may be, it doesn’t soften the ache blossoming in her chest.

“So,” Nick begins. “Back to where it all started.”

“Seemed appropriate,” Jenny offers. “The beginning is the end.”

He shifts his weight, breaking her gaze. “This is goodbye, huh?”

She nods, looking down. “For now, anyway.”

“Am I ever gonna see you again?”

Jenny bites her lip, refusing to meet his eye. “I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I think so. I mean … you know where to find me now, right? It’s like riding a bike.”

“You never forget,” Nick adds. He sighs, pushing up the brim of his hat. He shoves his hands into his pockets, brushing his thumbs against the seersucker. “Look, J, I know this isn’t the time, but ---“

“I love you, too, Nicholas. And don’t forget it.”

“Never could, Lands,” he promises, reaching up one hand to cup her cheek. “Never.”

She pulls herself up to her full height, then taller, rolling onto the balls of her feet. She closes the distance between them and ---

He comes to with the ghost of a kiss on his lips, stepping gingerly out of the pod.

“It’s over,” Amari assures him. “Zero trace of Kellogg’s code. How are you feeling?”

Nick rubs at his brow. It’s a hell of a question, one he doesn’t really know how to answer. “Relieved, thanks. Maybe a little,” he laughs, “tired.”

“I’m not surprised,” Amari offers. “I don’t know what happened in there, but you had quite the night, Mr. Valentine.”

“Thanks for the help, Amari. I appreciate it. Give Irma my thanks, too.”

Once again, he’s at a loss. It seems like that’s what all his would-be victories end in these days. Kellogg. Eddie. The Institute. Far Harbor. They all add up to the same question: so what?

The Institute is a crater. So, what? It still ruined countless innocent lives. He has a brother and some of the answers about his past. So, what? It’s still a tangle of trauma, both his human counterpart’s and his own. Eddie Winter is dead. So, what? He’s blotted out the last evidence of the real Nick Valentine. Kellogg’s dead for good this time. So, what?

So, Jenny still exists, in some limited form, in some limited way. So, she is something more than a dead man's memory. So, there is someone nearer, closer, someone else who has born witness.

So, he is not entirely alone.

He mounts the stairs slowly, feeling his age in the joints of his body; walks through the parlor, filled with men and women chasing their own could-have-beens; steps outside into a rainy morning, and hitches his collar up.

It’s a long way back.


End file.
